What is corpse hopping?

Question

I've seen the term "corpse hopping" used regarding some behavior on the higher difficulties of Diablo III. What does that mean, and how is that done?

Asked by Oak

Answer

It refers to an abuse of game mechanics to get to a certain destination without having to kill monsters on your way there.

It only works with at least two players and the procedure is as follows: You run as far as you can, and die. You stay dead. Since your standard in the camp can still be used when you're dead, your partner can teleport to you, run/leap/teleport/etc (hence "hopping") a little further and die again. You revive, go back to camp and use his standard.

Repeat this a lot and eventually you'll end up at the destination where you want to go (boss-fights, for example).

Answered by heishe

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Where did the 'pwnage' or 'pwn' or (verb) 'to pwn' come from ?

Question

I know it is a malformation of ownage or to dominate your opponent beyond normal or average means of victory, but why is it Pwnage? Why the 'P' there? Was it a combination of two different words?

Asked by Foxtrot

Answer

The best place to look is here, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/owned-pwned

Owned (below: Variations) is a “leetspeak” slang word, derived from the traditional meaning of the verb “own”, as meaning to appropriate or conquer to gain ownership. The term strongly implies domination, severe defeat, and/or humiliation of a rival. For instance, “I owned the network at MIT” indicates that the speaker had cracked the servers and had the same root-level privileges that the legitimate owner of the servers had. It is also now primarily used in the Internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., “You just got pwned!”) and as popular slang, outside of the internet. It is partly synonymous with a high degree of fail, and while sometimes these terms have been used interchangeably, it is more proper to say that someone or something is “fail” if they have been “owned.”

Edit as per comments.

"P"wned
The “p” in “pwned” alteration within the computer community has been believed to have have originated from typing too fast on the standard English QWERTY keyboard, thus missing the “o” and typing “p” instead. It could also be thought to pay homage to early hackers who tampered with phone equipment rather than computers--and “pwn” may simply be following this trend. (e.g., phishing, phreaking) According to one definition in the UrbanDictionary, the term “pwn” dates back to the 1960s at M.I.T. It was used competitively by programmers working on chess AI. When one out programmed the others he would refer to himself as King and the others as pawns. It started being used on Fido Net across the BBS world before internet went public, although it was used on the internet between university’s at the time.

Answered by DavidYell

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Where does the term “gib” come from?

Question

Especially while talking about FPS, the term "gib" is quite common. While I get it's related to a sudden and gruesome death, I'd like to know its actual meaning and where it comes from.

Asked by Kappei

Answer

Gib is short for "giblets" - which are chunks of meat, or more specifically:

the edible offal of a fowl, typically including the heart, gizzard, liver, and other visceral organs.

This term was quite popular among the early id Software games, Doom and Quake in particular, where a particularly damaging blow to an enemy or another player usually yielded a rain of unspecified meaty hunks, rather than an "intact" monster or player corpse.

Wikipedia has a longer definition along with a list of notable gaming gib implementations:

The use of "gib" is reserved for instances when a game character has been killed with such force that their body is reduced to a slurry of flesh and blood.

This article also credits Adrian Carmack, one of the founders of id Software, with coining this term, although this statement is unsourced.

The notable examples besides "classic" Doom and Quake gibs are things like in Fallout 3, where particularly explosive VATS kills can yield some gruesome gibs, and Left4Dead, where zombies frequently explode or fall apart when shot. Boomers even tend to gib themselves!

TF2 has an interesting implementation of the gib system, and you can even switch it to "birthday party" mode where everyone explodes into presents, party hats, streamers, etc instead of chunks of meat.

Answered by agent86

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What is bunny hopping?

Question

I hear the term bunny hopping thrown around a lot. What is it? Can it actually help me in some games?

Asked by Jeffrey

Answer

Bunny hopping, or bunny jumping, is a term used in video games to describe the basic movement technique in which a player jumps repeatedly, instead of running, in order to move faster.

The term is most used in first-person shooters to refer to act of pressing the jump key while holding a movement key to move faster and/or to evade attacks more effectively. In several games based on Quake engines or their derivatives moving in a zigzag pattern while bunny hopping is the fastest way to move around and increases length of jumps, making the player an even more difficult target. While a zigzag movement pattern may not be the fastest way to get from one point to another in other games, players may feel that the protection provided by bunny hopping more than compensates for this disadvantage. Bunny hopping might also be required to gain speed to perform a trick jump or to provide better movement control while in mid-air (especially after performing a trick jump).

See this Wikipedia article for more.

Answered by Mehper C. Palavuzlar

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Phrases for describing earning experience points and gaining levels in gaming?

Question

What are the common phrases/terminology for describing the act of earning experiences and building up levels during a game (probably more so in a RPG context)?

Somehow I think 'farming' is a related word, but am not sure if it is accurate. Any suggestion is welcome!

Asked by MLister

Answer

Let's see, your options are:

Exping: the act of gaining experience, be it through quests, missions, puzzles, treasures, or just by killing opponents. EDIT: disregard the previous term, as it looks like it's not as widespread as I thought. Consider it just a localized version of leveling.

Leveling: the act of gaining levels, usually by accumulating experience points (XP). Generally used refering to the actual moment of going up a level ("He just leveled up"), can also be used for a continuous action ("I'm spending my time leveling")

The term "Farming" instead refers to the act of going through the same actions for long stretches of time to hoard single resources (you can farm money, minerals, items, and even XPs)

Answered by Kappei

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What genre of video game does Diablo belong to?

Question

I've recently played Diablo 1 and 2 and I'm totally hooked. Now I've been wondering what genre this game belongs to, so it would help me find similar games.

Asked by Sir Ksilem

Answer

The genre has a few popular names, including:

• Hack and slash
• Action RPG
• Dungeon crawl
• Diablo-like or Diablo-esque

And sometimes even the term "roguelike" is used - there is a vast difference between the roguelike genre and games like Diablo, but the latter are obviously influenced by the former.

The most common term I've encountered is "hack and slash". There are many, many games that belong to this genre, especially since the success of Diablo.

The excellent Moby Games site has a page about the genre, which briefly outlines what defines it as well as providing a list of all the games it considers to be "Diablo variants".

Answered by Oak

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What is a “fraud”? [closed]

Question

I have often heard someone accusing another player to be a fraud, especially in the Beat 'em Up genre, like Street Fighter. It is used like this:

• He is a fraud
• I will expose him as a fraud

What does that mean and what is the difference to being a noob?

Are there any preconditions that you need to match to be a fraud?

Asked by ayckoster

Answer

Basically Fraud is what @yx said, "fraud noun  [frawd] 4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur. – yx."

Noob is a person that one that think that know more that he actually does. Does not want to learn.

From Urban Dictionary:

Fraud

(n) 1. Imposter. 2. Fake. 3. Homer Simpson. Homer: What if people think a guy's a hero, but he was really just lucky? Magic Johnson: Don't worry. Sooner or later, people like that are exposed as the frauds they are.

Noob

A. INTRO I. What is this? II. Defining 'Noob'

B. COMMON NOOB CHARACTERISTICS I. Noobish II. Where to find noobs III. Behavior of noobs IV. Noob religion V. More about noob habitats

C. AVOIDING NOOBS I. Make sure you aren't one II. Major noob avoiding strategies

---

A. INTRO

I. What is this? This guide is designed to give you a better understanding of what a noob is, how to recognize them, some details about them, and how to avoid or get rid of them. It mostly applies to online forums, which are the main targets of migrating noobs.

II. Defining 'Noob' Contrary to the belief of many, a noob/n00b and a newbie/newb are not the same thing. Newbs are those who are new to some task* and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. n00bs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more. They expect people to do the work for them and then expect to get praised about it, and make up a unique species of their own. It is the latter we will study in this guide so that the reader is prepared to encounter them in the wild if needed.

Noobs are often referred to as n00bs

Answered by Michel Ayres

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What are Easter Eggs?

Question

I've noticed a lot of games contain so called "Easter eggs", my question is simple. What are easter eggs in games?

Asked by Harpal

Answer

According to Wikipedia:

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game. The term was coined—according to Warren Robinett—by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure.

Answered by Margaret

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What is metagame?

Question

What is so called meta-game in StarCraft 2?

What other games have this meta-game?

Asked by Łukasz Lew

Answer

A meta-game for any game is the way that the game is played. Knowing the metagame is not just knowing the mechanics of the game, but knowing what to expect your opponent to do. It is the relative frequency of each possible tactic, maneuver, build, etc.

One of the easiest to understand examples of this is with Magic: the Gathering. Knowing the metagame in Magic is knowing what styles of decks you might come up against. If you see an Island come out turn one, is he going to be trying to lock you down, draw you out, make evasive creatures, or any variety of things blue can do? You don't know if you don't know the metagame.

In StarCraft, for a more localized example, Protoss should wall off against Zerg, but not against Protoss or Terran. Zerg might 6-pool, and if you don't wall off then he's probably going to beat you. As Protoss continues to wall off and 6-pools continue to be ineffective, Zerg players might stop using that strategy. As Zerg players stop 6-pooling, Protoss players might not wall off as often, making the 6-pool effective again. You have to know the current mindset of other players to make the optimal play. That is the metagame.

The metagame is always evolving for any game, so you have to keep playing or reading about your game to keep up with the current metagame.

Answered by StrixVaria

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Where does the concept of “Mana” as a resource come from?

Question

In today's field of gaming, the humble mana bar has become nearly as widespread as the health bar. Everywhere from MMOs to flash games, to traditional turn-based RPGs, Mana exists as a finite consumable resource (often a blue bar) used to cast spells and/or abilities.

And yet, the biblical definition of mana has little to do with the term as it exists in modern-day vernacular.

Tolkien or Dungeons and Dragons are the usual culprits for widespread fantasy terms (dwarves come to mind), but neither Tolkien nor any version of Dungeons and Dragons make mention of mana (Tolkien downplayed magic in general, and D&D has traditionally used the concept of "spells per day"), so the origin of the term remains unknown to me.

So where or when did "Mana" first become used in this modern, videogame-inclined sense?

Asked by Raven Dreamer

Answer

It's almost certainly derived from a pan-Polynesian idea of "that which makes something effective" - usually, what makes magic effective. "Mana" tends to travel in the company of the idea of "taboo", the complex of rules that distinguish something as sacred. Mana comes from obedience of taboo, from the performance of certain rites, from pleasing the spirits of ancestors, or from other sources, depending on the particular island whose mana/taboo complex you're studying. (Keesing's Kwaio Religion is probably the most readable account, and recommended reading - the Kwaio have a verb that's a cognate of "mana", and their practices revolve around satisfying ancestor spirits who can in turn "namana"-ize their descendants' activities, mundane and magical alike, so that they meet with success.)

Larry Niven is probably the writer who brought the idea into Western fantasy literature, as the Wikipedia article indicates, and it spread in that millieu during the 1970s.

Answered by Colin Creitz

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Origin of the term “gimping”

Question

In the Super Smash Bros. series, "gimping" is the practice of stopping an opponent from recovering back to the stage, usually by grabbing the ledge before them or just going out and hitting them. However, I'm curious... where did the term actually come from? Was it named after a player who practiced it, similar to planking? Or is it something else entirely?

Asked by Nicholas1024

Answer

The term 'gimp' is a sometimes-derogatory term for one who is crippled; a gimp. When a player uses the techniques you've described, they're effectively crippling their opponent, by removing their ability to recover. In the same vein, it could also be related to the fact that in this scenario, the player trying to make the recovery has a 'handicap' (or is crippled) when compared to the other player, who is effectively in control of the situation.

In both of these variances, the player is control is able to use certain techniques as a means of 'crippling', or 'gimping' their opponent.

---

This is all absolutely speculation, but it didn't feel right as a comment.

Answered by GnomeSlice

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Are “Let's Play” videos managed or promoted by a collective entity?

Question

Why are so many gaming videos' titles on Youtube prefaced by a "Let's Play"? Is some official company or entity sponsoring each video, that these users are working for? Is each video submitted to a weekly contest or something like that? Or is just a collective meme for gamers on Youtube?

Asked by Billare

Answer

Supposedly it started at Something Awful, where people would play games and put their own humorous commentary over it. Since then, it's expanded and expanded, but the whole idea is just the style

There's even a website devoted to Let's Play content, the Let's Play Archive, head over there or read their About section for more info. TVTropes also has an entry on it.

Answered by Nick T

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Why is it offensive to call someone a 3 Minute Mage?

Question

I was reading game terminology It says

3-Minute Mage Refers to a Mage (often an Arcane and Fire spec) who possesses one or all of the following: Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, and Talisman of Ephemeral Power (or other temporary damage-increase trinket). All of these skills/trinkets have a 3-minute cooldown or less, allowing increased magical effectiveness for a limited period of time. When used in conjunction with one another, these skills/trinkets can nearly guarantee at least one kill in PvP. Mages with this combination are often accused of not knowing how to play, and of only engaging in PvP every 3 minutes. Calling someone a 3-minute mage is considered an insult.

I am noob and curious to know little more about it.

Asked by GeoStrike

Answer

The phrase '3-minute mage' is derogatory for the same reasons that a player that relies exclusively on cheesy rush builds in SC2 is derided.

In short: It's very effective against unprepared and unskilled players who don't know what they're dealing with. It gets you to a moderate level of success quickly and then... plateaus.

At which point, any player good enough to know what they're doing will see that said 3-minute mage has blown relevant cooldowns, use enough of their own to survive or escape, and run and hide until 20 seconds have passed and said cooldowns have faded, and then completely destroy said mage while they are exposed, vulnerable, and unable to effectively counter anything.

It's considered derogatory because the build is considered to have a low skillcap (as in, the gap between a bad player using the build and a good one is relatively small) in addition to it's relatively high skill floor (as in, a bad player with the build will still perform pretty well in some situations), and considered to be a 'dueling build' or 'bg farming build' of little use in a real competitive environment. It's also historically a popular build with Mae players who attempt to PVP with very little actual PVP gear - the thinking being that if they're already only useful every 3 minutes, being fairly fragile is worth it to get the most out of that 10% of the time that cooldowns are up and active.

While these perceptions are not always true (there have been times that a '3 minute mage' type build has been the flavor of the month even among the most competitive of players - generally as fire support in team compositions that rely on other players to provide the control and durability that the mage lacks, allowing the mage to focus on fairly explosive firepower), they have been true at enough points in the history of the games competitive balance that the sterotype remains.

Alternately, it could just be that it's a euphemism for calling the player in question a premature ejaculator.

Answered by LessPop_MoreFizz

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What type of strategy game is this? You rearrange positions?

Question

What do you call games where you have to move and re-arrange cars or boxes to move a goal box into a location. There have been games like this since Atari, as far as I know. It's some kind of tactical game. I can maybe draw an example, as a kind of flow chart:

1.

Goal Block Item
xxxx       xxxx

2.

Goal       Item
xxxx Block xxxx

3.

Goal Item  <--
xxxx Block xxxx

4.

WIN  <---------
xxxx Block xxxx

If you possibly know the first game of this kind, I would be interested in that, or any game names. If you add pictures or media or links to the same, that would be useful.

Asked by Wolfpack'08

Answer

I'd say puzzle game, and more accurately sliding blocks puzzle game.

Examples of sliding puzzles

• Fifteen puzzle
• Inakube
• Klotski (mentioned here by Hex)
• Minus Cube
• Jumbly
• Sokoban (mentioned here by Konrad)

Otherwise, there's also a list of puzzle game types on Wikipedia, but I think that the previously given term is the best match.

Answered by Anto

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What do those abbreviations mean in Diablo 2?

Question

After Diablo 3 gets delayed further and further I recently started playing Diablo II online again after aaages. Thanks reddit ;p

Since I never was deep into multiplayer in D2 I have now some problems to understand what people say. Here's a list of abbreviations I don't understand so far:

• ED
• MF
• SoJ
• ft or FT
• ISO
• SC
• HC
• cube/cubing
• Ammy
• torch
• wp
• eth
• e-bugged
• 1/49/69/190 Alma Negra
• 1-4os "some armor name"
• fcr
• fhr
• vit
• dex
• En
• SR
• RS
• Decrep
• Blizz
• BlizzBaller
• MeteOrb
• FRW

I think I'll soon add more when I see them.

Asked by F.S.

Answer

• ED - Enhanced Damage or Enhanced Defense
• MF - Magic Find
• SoJ - Stone of Jordan
• ft or FT - For Trade (the opposite of ISO, below)
• ISO - In Search Of (what people say when they want to trade for something)
• SC - Softcore
• HC - Hardcore
• cube/cubing - Use of the Horadric Cube
• Ammy - Slang for Amulet
• torch - Hellfire Torch
• wp - Waypoint
• eth - Ethereal
• e-bugged - A bug where ethereal body armor has the ethereal defense bonus on it applied twice when sockets are added to it via the Horadric Cube recipe.

• 1/49/69/190 Alma Negra - A shield. The numbers that come before it reference certain stats on it, since the numbers of certain attributes fall within a certain range. For example, here is some guy wanting to trade an Alma Negra, and he describes his stats on it, in words.

  +2 skills, 203% enhanced defense (748 total defense), 40% enhanced damage, 56% bonus to attack rating

  In that example, his is 2/40/56/203.

• 1-4os - OS = Open Sockets
• fcr - Faster Cast Rate
• fhr - Faster Hit Recovery
• vit - Vitality
• dex - Dexterity
• En - Energy
• SR - Summon Resist
• RS - Raise Skeleton
• Decrep - Decrepify
• Blizz - Blizzard
• BlizzBaller - A sorceress who primarily uses a combination of Blizzard and Fireball
• MeteOrb - A sorceress who primarily uses a combination of Meteor and Frost Orb
• FRW - Faster Run/Walk

Source: way too much Diablo 2, supplemented by http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Abbreviations_and_Acronyms and http://www.diablowiki.com/Glossary_(Diablo_II)

Now that you know the definitions, you can look them up pretty easy I think. It would be too much to explain each of them in detail here.

Answered by CptSupermrkt

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What is a hit box?

Question

What exactly is a hit box? Is there any way that knowing about hit boxes could help in a game?

Asked by Jeffrey

Answer

Definition

A hitbox is an invisible box-like area that when penetrated, counts as a "hit". It's different than the model (the visible character and his colors that you see). The hitbox is meant to compensate for lag and movement. When a character is moving, his hitbox is usually farther from the model. When a character is still, his hitbox is located directly on top of his model.

Contrary to the name, a hitbox is actually composed of several boxes that represent the character's different areas (head, arm, torso).

Hitboxes, and You

You should definitely know how the hitbox affects you. It's the source of nearly all bizarre "WTF, how did I die?", and impossible shots that you see other players making. Understanding the hitbox is key to understanding how you die (and possibly getting better at your game).

Demonstration

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's an excellent video from Team Fortress 2:

http://www.wegame.com/watch/TF2_Hitboxes/

Watch how the hitbox moves according to the model, where it moves and when, and lastly, understand where you need to shoot to penetrate that hitbox (and score).

Illustration

Below is a picture of hitboxes in Counter Strike. As these models are sitting still, the hitboxes are right on top of them.

Answered by rlb.usa

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How can a game be 2.5D?

Question

I've noticed some games be described as 2.5D. How can a game be 2.5D? Dimensions are discrete entities, aren't they?

Asked by Mechko

Answer

2.5D usually refers to "gameplay in an otherwise three-dimensional video game that is restricted to a two-dimensional plane."

It can also refer to the viewpoint the player has. Such as an isometric-type view on a 3D world.

Wiki - 2.5D

Answered by Präriewolf

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What is weapon spread as it relates to Team Fortress 2?

Question

"Weapon Spread" seems to be a term used ofter in regards to "vanilla" servers in Team Fortress 2. What does this term mean, and how does it relate to server settings and gameplay?

Asked by Jeffrey

Answer

Weapon Spread refers to the random pattern of "spread out" that pellet weapons in TF2 have when fired. As distance increases, each pellet that was fired spreads out.

Some pellet weapons in TF2 include (this is not a full list, more weapons are being added to TF2 pretty quickly recently):

• Shotgun
• Scattergun
• Force-A-Nature
• Frontier Justice

Some servers use a "fixed weapon spread", which means that the pellets still spread out, but do so in a nonrandom fashion, so that each shot is the same.

This is the fixed weapon pattern most commonly used:

This is controlled by the server setting: tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 1. Some servers like to use this setting because they feel it removes more luck from the competition and makes the outcome of battles more based on skill.

However, one side effect of making this change is that due to the increased accuracy and reliability, pellet weapons become more powerful than they are normally.

Note that server setting does not have an impact on any other weapons than those listed above.

Some other weapons may appear to have weapon spread, but they in fact do not. They do however have inaccurate firing, and/or recoil that effects how straight a shot will go. In terms of TF2, weapon spread only refers to the situation where multiple projectiles are fired from a single shot, and spread out from each other as they travel.

Answered by TM.

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How do I know when it's time to push?

Question

I'm fairly new to League of Legends and I learned of the concept of zoning recently, and it makes a lot of sense, but no source that I visited tells me when I know it is time to push. The most information that I found was "around level 6" is is hardly useful, if at all.

So, how can a beginner know when it's time to push?

Answer

Pushing generally refers to moving the battle lines the minions make towards the opponent's nexus, destroying towers and 'pushing' closer and closer with each wave of minions.

You want to push when:

• a) all 5 enemy champions are visible on distant parts of the map
• b) you have just won a team fight, and your team still has a goodly portion of its health / mana
• c) Following a successful gank (or any other situation where your team's champions outnumber the opposing team's defenders.

Both of these situations means you and your minions can attack a tower with impunity, and not worry about being harassed, killed, or countered by enemy heroes.

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What exactly is a “cheese” in Starcraft 2?

Question

I seem to see commentators mention "cheese" with regards to Starcraft 2, but I'm not quite sure what they mean.

If a particular build/tactic is called a "cheese", does that mean it is a considered to be uncounterable? Or does it just mean that it is considered to be a tactic that is "too easy" with regard to its effectiveness? Or is there some other more subtle meaning that I am missing?

Answer

The term "Cheese" comes from the adjective "Cheesy". The not-so-subtle innuendo there is that a victory via so-called "cheese" did not come from the players own skill, but was merely because the loser was unprepared for the "cheesy" tactics that lead to their loss.

What qualifies as "cheese" will undoubtedly vary from player to player, but generally the term refers to exploiting system mechanics in a way unanticipated by your opponent, or otherwise not balanced around.

Many people dislike cheese because it is hard to predict and counter if you are not prepared for it.

Several Examples:

• Thor Rush -- build a factory near your opponent, attack with Thor + repair SCV's around 7 minute mark.
• Photo-Cannon Push -- rushing a forge and placing photon cannons around your opponents base.
• Banshee / Void Ray rush vs. Zerg -- takes adavantage of the fact that Zerg has little viable anti-air at T1 other than mass queens.
• Proxy Rush -- Building a unit production facility much closer to your opponents base than your own so that you can reinforce your troops faster.
• Worker Rush -- in 2v2 (or more), making no units, and instead attacking another player with your workers alone.

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